Page 47 - A Historical Lie: The Stone Age

Imagine what will be left of today's great civilizations in hun-
dreds of thousands of years. All our cultural accumulation—paint-

ings, statues and palaces—will all disappear, and barely a trace of
our present technology will remain. Many materials designed to re-
sist wear and tear will gradually, under natural conditions, begin to
succumb. Steel rusts. Concrete decays. Underground facilities col-
lapse, and all materials require maintenance. Now imagine that tens
of thousands of years have passed, and they have been subjected to
thousands of gallons of rain, centuries of fierce winds, repeated
floods and earthquakes. Perhaps all that will remain will be giant
pieces of carved stone, the quarried blocks that make up buildings
and the remains of various statues, just like what has come down to
us from the past. Or maybe not a definite trace of our advanced civi-
lizations will be left to fully understand our daily lives, only from
tribes living in Africa, Australia or some other place in the world. In
other words, of the technology we possess (televisions, computers,

microwave ovens, etc.), not a trace will remain though the main out-
line of a building or a few fragments of statues will perhaps survive.
If future scientists look at these scattered remains and describe all so-
cieties of the period we are living in as "culturally backward," will
they not have departed from the truth?
Or, if someone discovers a work written in Mandarin and con-

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